1. When Lorne Michaels began putting the show together in 1975, Gilda Radner was his first hire.

The year before, the pint-sized, squawky-voiced Radner came to New York to do "The National Lampoon Radio Hour" and "The National Lampoon Show."

Michaels had seen some of her work with Toronto's "Second City" comedy troupe, and was hooked. "I felt there was a remarkable quality to her," Michaels said, "a goodness which came through whatever she was doing."

2. Radner's quirky characterizations won her an Emmy for outstanding performance as an actress in a variety series in 1978.

4. Years later, Curtin called out male cast members for being sexist.

During an "SNL" cast reunion on "O, The Oprah Winfrey Show," Curtin opened up about how Studio 8H was sometimes a hostile environment for comediennes.

She specifically called out John Belushi for undermining the show's female writers:

"They were working against John, who said women are just fundamentally not funny. You'd go to a table read and if a woman writer had written a piece for John, he would not read it in his full voice. He would whisper it. He felt as though it was his duty to sabotage pieces that were written by women."

5. Candice Bergen was the first woman to host "SNL." They asked her back four episodes later.

8. Louis-Dreyfus refused to tame her curly hair when a producer told her it would look sexier that way.

Early in her "SNL" career, she appeared in a sketch playing John DeLorean's wife, and straightened her hair for the role. The next day, a producer called her into his office and said a bunch of NBC executives were turned on by the look.

"This was apparently his way of trying to entice me into straightening my hair for the rest of season," Louis-Dreyfus told Adam Baer for Rolling Stone. "I was so shocked that anyone would say anything like that, I just burst out laughing in a hysterical way."

The incident inspired Louis-Dreyfus to make her "Seinfeld" character's hair "crazy curly."

9. Julia Sweeney brought her most famous recurring character, Pat, to the silver screen.

Sweeney created a '90s cultural phenomenon through Pat, the cringey nerd who befuddled celebrity hosts and audiences alike with his/her nondescript gender.

The guessing game of whether Pat was a man or woman became so popular that Sweeney made "It's Pat" the movie. It tanked at the box office, butTV critics still applaud Sweeney for cementing the role of the recurring character into the show's identity.

10. Ellen Cleghorne lasted four seasons on the show — longer than any black female cast member before her.

Although she stayed on "SNL" longer than her black female predecessors, Yvonne Hudson and Danitra Vance, she was not exempt from the angry, ghetto tropes that followed black comediennes in every role at the time. Her two recurring characters were Queen Shenequa, a loud, gossipy music critic who dressed in African garb, and Zoraida, a pushy NBC page.

11. Sarah Silverman used her failure on "SNL" as a launch pad for her career.

At age 22, the New York University drop-out had one of the least successful "SNL" careers in history. Not a single one of the sketches she wrote made it to air, and she was fired from her writing and featured player post after one season.

During a season when male cast members outnumbered women 3-to-1, Shannon emerged as the show's first female breakout star.

Her Yorkshire-Terrier-supply of energy combined with a ready-for-anything attitude led to memorable characters such as proud 50-year-old Sally O’Malley and Mary Katherine Gallagher, an extremely moody, hyper-active Catholic schoolgirl who dreams of fame.

14. By Maya Rudolph's seventh season on "SNL," she had performed as 14 different characters and impersonated 47 different celebrities.

15. Amy Poehler was promoted from featured player to cast member in the middle of her first season. Eddie Murphy is the only other cast member to achieve that.

The eight-season "SNL" veteran made her debut on the first episode that aired after September 11, 2001, and quickly made repertory player status. Poehler was a masterful impressionist — skewering Kelly Ripa, Dakota Fanning, and Hillary Clinton — while also creating goofy original characters like Kaitlin, the sugar-fueled preteen who clamored for her brother Rick's attention.

19. During the 2008-2009 season of SNL, Kristen Wiig appeared in more sketches than any other member of the cast.

From Dooneese, the tiny-handed, unbearably creepy sister of a Finger Lakes-based singing group, to Gilly, the mischievous schoolgirl whose pranks became increasingly dangerous — Wiig built a legacy on her oddity. The three-time Emmy award nominee transformed herself into the most horrible, contorted characters with such conviction, that they too became household names.

20. The ladies of SNL came together for a "Women of SNL" TV special in 2010, and opened the show with this "Real Housewives" reunion-style sketch.

Because there were no African American women on the show, Thompson has played everyone from Maya Angelou to Oprah. Last fall, the 10-year "SNL" player announced in an interview with TV Guide that he would no longer cross-dress and enable the show's lack of diversity.

*Not a woman, obviously.

22. Sasheer Zamata joined the cast as a featured player early this year.

The public outcry following Thompson's remarks prompted Lorne Michaels to launch a nationwide talent search. After secret auditions were held in New York and Los Angeles, Zamata earned a spot on the roster.